Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner’s SuperFreakonomics, the sequel to their wildly successful book Freakonomics, won’t be released until October 20, and yet it’s already managed to spark a war of words among environmental and economic bloggers. Levitt and Dubner sum up some of the controversy (and explains their side of things) here and here.
Calderon says:
Assuming Dubner accurately summarizes the e-mail chain between Romm and Caldeira, Romm comes off looking pretty terrible and with no credibility. Indeed, maybe we can even have another 300 comment post on whether Levitt & Dubner have a viable libel action against Romm! Oh what calm and civil fun that would be …
October 18, 2009, 9:25 pmtamerlane says:
The disagreements are equivalent to arguments over homoousion versus homoiousion — only true believers understand the distinction or care one way or the other.
If Leavitt and Dubner were anything other than members of a sect within the global warming religion they would consider the following:
(1) Current models cannot predict the direction of climate change nor, given our current understanding and levels of measurement, can we be sure they even approximate a correct model of the human climate. [To be fair, they sort of make a nod in the direction of doing this.]
(2) Therfore, we cannot be sure whether the earth’s climate will become colder or warmer or wetter or dryer in the immediate future and whether any such changes will be longer or shorter term.
(3) More specifically it is unclear whether any human intervention can affect natural changes in the climate.
(4) Therefore, rather than trying to change climate — an iffy and hubristic goal at best — it might be better to plan feasible human responses for dealing with climate change no matter the form such change entails.
October 18, 2009, 9:29 pmCato The Elder says:
Oh, Levitt and Dubner have got to be loving this. Mo problems [with the book], mo money.
October 18, 2009, 9:40 pmMichael Turton says:
Massive link list to reviews of Chap 5
http://manpollo.org/forums/showthread.php?p=5513
Scan of Chap 5
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/13213779/Superfreakonomics
Despite what they say in their defense above, Krugman’s characterization of their falling for the global cooling myth appears to be correct, if that is truly a scan of Chapter 5 of the book.
October 18, 2009, 9:49 pmNathan says:
I read Freakonomics, and it was absurdly sloppy on cause and effect. The best rebuttal is John Lott’s book Freedomnomics.
October 18, 2009, 10:00 pmGrover Gardner says:
Yes, he does–a bit. On the other hand, Caldeira is being very diplomatic, it seems to me, when he says:
The fact that Levitt and Dubner so badly misrepresented Caldeira about carbon dioxide is pretty egregious.
October 18, 2009, 10:08 pmSFH says:
“(3) More specifically it is unclear whether any human intervention can affect natural changes in the climate.”
How so? Humans have certainly affected climate in the past. If they had some idea what natural changes are coming, why would they suddenly lose their ability to affect climate?
October 18, 2009, 10:22 pmvic says:
Apostasy cannot be tolerated
Death to the heretics
How can they possibly question “The Word”.
they must be the spawn of the devil, or capitalist pigs ( same thing – right!)
in all seriousness, as the influence of traditional religions declines in western society, a void is left in the mental/ emotional lives of people. Gaia worship is a major and dangerous movement filling that void.
October 18, 2009, 10:30 pmMark Field says:
It might be helpful to hear both sides of this dispute, particularly since some of the accusations are that Levitt and Dubner have been deleting comments. Brad DeLong has several posts discussing the issues, the latest one here.
October 18, 2009, 10:59 pmA. Zarkov says:
That’s a funny considering that DeLong himself deletes comments on his blog all the time. They just disappear without any indication. He will delete even short, pertinent and polite comments if he doesn’t like them for some reason. People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
October 18, 2009, 11:08 pmKevin P. says:
This uproars shines bright sunlight upon the true believers in the Church of
October 18, 2009, 11:11 pmGlobal WarmingClimate Change. Levitt and Dubner have committed a grave heresy and must be punished.Eli Rabett says:
As Wm Connolley said
October 18, 2009, 11:18 pmKevin P. says:
I have some experience with William Connolley on Wikipedia, where he and his admin buddies have a lock on the entire subject of
October 18, 2009, 11:20 pmGlobal WarmingClimate Change. The guy is a true believer. When you quote him, just know that you are quoting a zealot.LN says:
I am a mindless zealot who blindly worships at the Church of Refuting Enviromentalism Through Ad Hominem Attacks. I am glad to see so many fellow worshippers here.
October 18, 2009, 11:32 pmKevin P. says:
If Levitt and Dubner have been deleting comments, they haven’t been deleting enough. You can read through the discussion of heresy here.
Let this be a warning for the rest of you. Do not commit heresy by questioning any of the tenets of the Church of
October 18, 2009, 11:32 pmGlobal WarmingClimate Change.Kevin P. says:
Welcome! You will feel at home here. You can also worship and give witness in Dubner’s comment thread.
October 18, 2009, 11:33 pmLN says:
Thank you. People like Grover Gardner give me the willies. I am glad that you are here to drive those folks away.
October 19, 2009, 12:16 amGrover Gardner says:
But above all, do not offer any substantive response to the criticisms leveled at the book–even when at least two of the experts cited therein have politely but firmly stated that their views have been badly misrepresented.
October 19, 2009, 12:32 amGrover Gardner says:
Writing poorly-vetted books on “economics” would appear to be running a close second.
October 19, 2009, 12:45 amHarryEagar says:
SFH sez: ‘Humans have certainly affected climate in the past.’
I would like to learn when they affected the climate globally.
As for regional effects, I used to live in Iowa, and I would not be surprised to learn that draining all the potholes and removing the year-round vegetative cover affected the local climate, but I’d be interested to know what the effects were.
October 19, 2009, 1:01 amRicardo says:
DeLong posted very specific questions and objections to very specific passages in the chapter that he found wrong, misleading or questionable. He did this both in the most recent post linked to above as well as this one. I am assuming you have detailed responses and criticisms to all of these?
October 19, 2009, 1:47 amLightcon says:
Not sure what you’re referring to here. I’m not aware of a significant movement to worship monotheistically a goddess extracted from polytheistic preclassical East-Mediterranean religion.
Perhaps you refer to James Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis. But that also leads to a sort of climate change heresy, as it would lead one to believe that the dangers of climate change will be limited by the Earth’s ability to maintain homeostasis as a unified living organism.
Perhaps you refer to the tendency of certain subscribers to New Age or neopagan spirituality to incorporate some belief in an Earth-goddess into their disorganized collections of superstition. But these people are not the accomplished scientists and coherent activists who are leading the call for restraints on greenhouse gas emissions.
Are the data and the predictive models on climate change completely clear and precise? Compared to say, Newtonian mechanics, no. The physics of climate is complicated and chaotic, and absolute certainty and precision are impossible. However, the overwhelming majority of scientists who’ve studied the matter in depth have concluded that the climate is warming, that human activity is largely responsible, and that if the process continues, it will have serious consequences for human society. There is plenty of room for educated debate on the magnitude of the risk, and the appropriate way to reduce that risk. But only one ignorant of the evidence could conclude that alarm over climate change is motivated only by religious belief.
October 19, 2009, 1:47 amA. Zarkov says:
My comment only concerned alleged complaints that Levitt and Dubner were deleting comments. That’s exactly what DeLong does, and I know that for a fact as he has deleted my comments without notification he was doing so and for no apparent reason than he disagreed. He himself has hurled insults at people he disagrees with. In my opinion he has the emotional maturity of a teenager.
October 19, 2009, 2:04 amJoe says:
I agree with both tamerlane and Nathan.
I have no use for Dubner and Levitt, even if they, in the broadest terms, make a point I agree with. With friends like that, who needs enemies?
October 19, 2009, 2:07 amA. Zarkov says:
Supplement to my prior comment.
All I can find are complaints by DeLong that he can’t get access to the book on Amazon. He then asserts (without providing evidence) that the publisher is somehow responsible for his inability to gain access. Typical DeLong. Fling insults. In my opinion he is best ignored, even in economics let alone something he seems to know little about: climate science.
Now perhaps somewhere he posed specific questions, but I was unable to find them.
October 19, 2009, 2:13 amHarryEagar says:
‘But only one ignorant of the evidence could conclude that alarm over climate change is motivated only by religious belief.’
I agree. There’s a whole lot of money involved, too.
It might be useful to divide the study of climatology into two parts:
There are the restricted local studies.
And there are the global studies.
The second kind are as close to worthless as anything I can think of in the history of ‘science.’ I use scare quotes because the models projecting what the climate is about to do are a dog’s breakfast. Anybody who takes them seriously pretty much removes himself from being taken seriously.
October 19, 2009, 2:39 amRicardo says:
Zarkov, you can find DeLong’s specific comments about the content of the book by actually clicking on the link I provided and also by visiting DeLong’s blog and reading the most recent post (different from what I linked to but also relevant) entitled “*Sigh* Last Post on Superfreakonomics, I Promise.” Obviously, you did not actually visit the blog or click on the links before commenting.
October 19, 2009, 2:47 amA. Zarkov says:
I read your post on my iPhone and did miss your link–sorry. I read DeLong’s comments and the only one I can see that at all substantive is about the black solar cells. One problem with trying to replace coal generated electricity with wind and solar is capital costs. Wind and solar have a low duty cycle– especially wind because of the cube law effect. Then we have the problem of how to run the transportation fleet– both cars and trucks. We need a means to store energy for vehicles, and so far batteries can’t compete with hydrocarbons. A switch to natural gas (which is abundant in the US) might work out because the carbon emissions are lower than gasoline.
October 19, 2009, 3:25 amLightcon says:
Good. Dismiss a consensus of experts with a pet vomit metaphor.
Actually, it’s local climate that’s really hard to predict. The basic global principle of the greenhouse effect is quite simple and deterministic. Most of the energy the earth receives from the sun is in the form (frequency) of visible light and ultraviolet. Most of the energy the earth radiates into space is in the form of infrared. Put more molecules into the atmosphere (like carbon dioxide and methane) that increase its absorption of infrared while preserving its transparency to visible light and ultraviolet, and you increase the planet’s net absorption of energy. That means the global average temperature rises.
Once the average temperature starts to rise, all kinds of biological and geological systems react in various ways, some of which tend to accelerate the increase in temperature, and some of which tend to retard it. So there is considerable uncertainty in predicting the speed and magnitude of the global temperature change, but little uncertainty in predicting the direction of the change.
Rising global average temperature will cause changes in prevailing patterns of wind and ocean currents, and this has the potential to change local climates dramatically. Predicting how the local climate will change in a given area is where the models get really messy, and the only context in which your metaphor is apt.
October 19, 2009, 3:46 amGrover Gardner says:
Google “deforestation,” for starters.
October 19, 2009, 5:55 amGrover Gardner says:
I think it’s fairly “substantive” to mischaracterize or misapply the work of the experts you cite, especially if you claim that it supports the point you’re trying to make.
October 19, 2009, 6:10 amAngus says:
I could tell this was coming based on the sloppiness of their first book, plus some of their blog posts about statistics that they either didn’t understand or did’nt bother to investigate.
Heck, they achieved something remarkable with their first book — they managed to make John Lott of all people look good in comparison. And that’s a truly amazing accomplishment. Even Mary Rosh would agree.
October 19, 2009, 7:45 am11-B/20.B4 says:
I have an idea! Lets all insult each other without digging into the science! Now, I don’t know much about the OP or Freakonomics, but if their representation of their own work is correct, they wouldn’t be the first. Bjorn Lomborg (sp?) and his team have done similar work, and basically say that the current crop of climate change control legislation is useless and expensive.
As to the issue of Global Warming (or whatever we’re calling it now), it’s worth taking seriously, and does need to be investigated. Unfortunately, much of the science in this field has been particularly badly done. Wang, Briffa, Mann, and all their derivative research has been largely discredited for falsifying records, undersampling and concealing data, and just bad math, respectively. Things you need to know:
1: The models used to predict climate change are severely limited. They did not predict the plateau we are currently in, and so must be updated. The hypothesis of carbon forcing being the dominant climate influent has been falsified. AGW is still a distinct possibility, but the hubristic notion that our cars are the most powerful weather control in the universe is dead.
2: There are serious problems with the way in which surface temperature is measured, especially in western countries, where urban heat island effects are screwing the data. http://surfacestations.org/ has more info on this. Data taken from atmospheric measurements from satellites is far less dire than the surface data.
3: Repeat after me, correlation is not causation, correlation is not causation. The relationship of CO2 to global climate is not well understood, and some scientists believe that the causal path is backward.
4: Any hypothesis for AGW must account for two things, the Medieval Warm Period and the ratio of CO2 during the last ice age. The MWP was declared false by Briffa, but it turns out his research was based on one lone solitary tree core. There is strong evidence of a MWP significantly warmer than current temperatures. During the last Ice Age, CO2 concentrations reached twelve times their current level, so any model claiming causal relationships must account for that as well.
You can believe what you want in this case, as I said, Global warming hasn’t been disproved, but several of its key hypotheses and more hysterical claims have been. It’s lead researchers (Briffa is the IPCC Climatology chair, for instance) are under fire for unscientific practices. The National Academy of Sciences has rebuked Mann, and called his research basically useless. Mann’s bristlecone series and sediment series are both discredited. The perfunctory denial of some is just as scientifically unsound as the chicken little posturing of others. Everyone take a deep breath, and look carefully at the issue.
1: Is AGW real?
2: How fast is it?
3: What is the most effective way of controlling it?
If any of these questions anger you, you probably aren’t being objective on the subject. This is like any other problem, there are causes, and solutions, and if you won’t hear alternatives, you probably aren’t the guy I want to be making decisions.
October 19, 2009, 8:48 amSk says:
Global warming delusion isn’t just about Gaia. It’s about three things:
1) Gaia. Extreme environmentalists actually believe it, and want to reduce the environmental impact of human beings so much, they are willing to do whatever it takes (destroy economies, rework the way human beings are living, eliminate the car/suburb culture, etc) to achieve that end.
2) Communist/Marxist/Socialists. Academic marxists have always had it out for the middle class (i.e. the “Bourgeois”). Destroying the SUV/suburb/golf/middle class culture is their preferred future. Global warming allows them to do that.
3) Economics. There’s alot of money in forcing people to actually buy into global warming. The most obvious example: crappy new lightbulbs that nobody wants will sell alot better if its illegal to purchase the alternative. The Chevy Volt will sell better as long as there is a legal requirement to buy it, and so on. George Soros, Al Gore, and the corporate push for global warming are all about this.
The three disparate interests are allied to remake human society. We’ll see if they succeed.
Global warming as truth? Learn about error bars. Every engineer studied them, not many engineers really apply them. Until you understand error, you too may be bamboozled into believing in global warming.
Sk
October 19, 2009, 9:03 amA. Zarkov says:
I think we need to wait for the book to come out so we get the full context. The book’s critics are so anxious to lambast it, they can’t wait a few days. After that I’m sure the statements about solar cells as well as the rest of the chapter will get a through review. Then we won’t have to depend on the likes of DeLong and other attack dogs.
October 19, 2009, 9:17 amEli Rabett says:
For those of you who would appreciate a rather more academic takedown of the original Freakonomics (the new one is a lot more of the same) John DiNardo has a forty pager, which can be summarized as
Apparently Levitt and Dubner have eliminated the well supported claims the second time around
October 19, 2009, 9:23 amA. Zarkov says:
The uncertainty in the climate sensitivity factor (temperature change for a doubling of CO2 concentration) has remained unchanged for a about 30 years. It’s still 1.5C – 4.5C. Why so little progress? We don’t understand all the feedbacks, in particular the cloud physics. We can’t model the cloud physics accurately because the resolution cells on the GCMs are much larger than the scale of the physical processes involved in cloud formation. Lacking the right physics the modelers run about a dozen “parameterizations”. You can find a discussion the section of the current IPCC report that deals with the science of global warming. One should note the current IPCC report is less detailed on this issue than prior ones. That’s because the cloud physics part is embarrassing, and they don’t like to talk about it.
When you do good science, you don’t have to attack your critics with smear campaigns because the science speaks for itself. When you do good science you don’t have to constantly harp on “consensus.”
October 19, 2009, 9:45 amKevin P. says:
Exactly. I am a Chemical Engineer with 20 years of experience, some of which included process modeling. I have seen and experienced how limited computer models are. The idea that one can model and predict the climate of the entire planet seems breathtakingly arrogant to me, particularly since there is no way to verify the model.
Hence the emphasis on consensus and viciously attacking anyone who disagrees with the consensus, although in science, the word consensus is meaningless. You can either prove something or you can’t.
I would like to put in a plug for Watts Up with That, the blog of Anthony Watts, who is the founder of the Surface Stations project which has found significant errors in the US surface weather station network through the old fashioned way of boots-on-the-ground hard science.
October 19, 2009, 10:23 amCalderon says:
I’d be skeptical about them “deleting comments” without more proof. When Krugman won his nobel, there were claims about him “deleting” comments from people arguing that his basic insights into trade were made by other economists who came before him, and so his work wasn’t really new. The response was that the NYT bloggers don’t have control over the comments, and that the comments apparently are just very slow to post.
October 19, 2009, 10:24 amRyan Waxx says:
It’s just incredible, the amount that people believe because they WANT to believe. Here you have a particularly sad example. The commenter puts up a quote that basically clears them of all misconduct except for one throwaway quote, and then REPEATS the “badly misrepresented” line as if they could not mentally process what they just quoted a couple lines ago. Instead of sinking in, it bounces off. Marvelous.
October 19, 2009, 10:26 amSoul Searcher says:
J. Bradford DeLong, notorious deleter of commments and scourge of polite discussion, shouldn’t be invoked in any worthwile debate.
October 19, 2009, 10:50 amLN says:
The carbon dioxide line was not a throwaway quote.
In theory, Dubner and Levitt are public intellectuals who are bringing ideas to a popular audience. It is interesting how much mileage they can get by focusing on tone (“fervent”, “smear”) over substance (any defense of the ridiculous solar-panel comment?)
October 19, 2009, 11:23 amGrover Gardner says:
Claiming that Caldeira doesn’t think CO2 is responsible for global warming is a pretty serious breach, especially when you’re defending an ant-carbon-reduction approach to the problem and drawing on his research in support of that argument. It’s more than just a “throwaway line”–the authors spend another two pages using selective quotes to lend support to the idea that Caldeira doesn’t think carbon is the problem. While Caldeira acknowledes that the quotes themselves are accurate as far as they go, the total effect is to mischaracterize the whole body of his work and the conclusions he himself has drawn from it. You can visit his website and see that his work is all about carbon and its effects on climate.
Note that Caldeira also says, “I do think there are a bunch of things in the chapter that give misimpressions.” Obviously, from his other remarks, he’s not happy about getting sucked into the controversy, but he certainly makes it clear that they slipped up, and badly, on this one.
October 19, 2009, 11:42 amAbdul Abulbul Amir says:
Is that so? The cooling of the 70′s was so predicted? The cooling of the little ice age was so predicted? The cooling and warming of the last few ice ages and warm interglacial periods was so predicted?
NASA counts a year in the 1930′s as the warmest on record. Is the cooler weather since so predicted?
Models that cannot account for known past behavior cannot be counted on to forecast the future.
October 19, 2009, 11:43 amMark Field says:
I am too. But several people did make the accusation, which left it unclear whether the post’s links to the authors’ site would provide a full debate. Thus my link to DeLong, who did a good job of identifying the problems.
October 19, 2009, 12:05 pmRyan Waxx says:
Fascinating. You manage to misrepresent both Calidara’s position AND that of the authors in less than one sentence. You really must take up a teaching job to pass that level of talent on lest it be lost.
Which is entirely consistant with this quote from Calidara:
Do you get it yet? With the exception of that throwaway line, he agrees with the ideas that are attributed to him. He does not necessarily agree with all their conclusions, but he agrees that they are using the same facts.
You are doing an extremely poor job of seperating Calidara’s criticism of the chapter itself and its conclusions from his characterization of how the authors treated the parts attributed to him. Which makes Romm a liar, because Romm claimed that the authors were falsifying the latter.
To the extent Calidara is criticizing the book, he’s criticizing the parts that are not attributed to him, and criticizing the conclusions of the chapter. But even Calidara says “as authors of the book, that is their prerogative.”
October 19, 2009, 12:23 pmBob K says:
Roger Peilke JR is evidently not pleased with Romm’s ethics or DeLong’s use of an email to vilify Pielke’s integrity. Pielke currently has three posts spanning the 18th-19th on the subject.
October 19, 2009, 12:55 pmLN says:
Ryan, Caldeira’s attitude towards the misrepresentations of his work in Superfreakonomics is not the central issue being debated. If it was, you (and Dubner) would have a very good takedown.
October 19, 2009, 12:59 pmGrover Gardner says:
Ryann, it’s rather pointless to continue arguing with you about this, since you refuse to look at the entire picture here, but Caldeira is pretty clearly saying that, while the authors have correctly quoted him, they have chosen to put his remarks in a context that conflicts with his own conclusions and the manner in which he presents his own research. While he grants that this is “their prerogative,” he has made it clear on his web site that the authors have misrepresented his views on carbon and its relation to global warming. The “throwaway line” is not insignificant–it pretty much contradicts the whole body of his work.
Now, it’s entirely possible that this was not intentional–Caldeira graciously grants as much–but the fact remains that the text as it stands now (“Yet his research tells him that carbon is not the right villain in this fight”) is, according to Caldeira himself, about as wrong as you can get. Hopefully it will be corrected, if for no other reason than as a courtesy to Caldeira.
October 19, 2009, 1:14 pmRyan Waxx says:
That’s the most unique defense I’ve ever seen. Changing the subject by pretending that what everyone in the blogs mentioned are discussing, as well as the comments here is not the ‘main’ issue takes chutzpah. And “argument by outrageous bluff” isn’t even a named fallacy!
Let me give you a hint. Romm started this whole thing by making claims that are provably lies, and since that has since been discredited by further interview of the supposedly aggrieved party, the debate is over.
Anything left is going to be sad little word-chopping by people who are stupid enough, or hope their audience is stupid enough, to be unable to tell the difference between distorting someone’s work and disagreeing with its conclusions.
October 19, 2009, 1:23 pmGrover Gardner says:
Romm may have acted badly, but there are plenty of other critiques out there that are valid and thoughtfully presented. The debate is hardly over just because one participant acted badly.
Pointing out that the authors have directly misstated the position of one of their main sources is hardly “word-chopping.”
October 19, 2009, 1:34 pmLN says:
the difference between distorting someone’s work and disagreeing with its conclusions.
These things are not mutually exclusive. For Christ’s sake, you think the line about carbon dioxide is a “throwaway” line.
There are substantive criticisms and there are the heated personal attacks that go along with them. I think for non-experts to take an expert’s work and use it to draw very different conclusions while not making it clear that the expert strongly disagrees with those conclusions is, yes, a substantive distortion (especially when the book makes it seem that the expert is in agreement; see the “throwaway” line). Now maybe this makes Dubner and Levitt hacks, or maybe they are just popular writers working in good faith, or maybe both. How you take it depends on your temperament. But on the substantial critique, Dubner offers no defense.
His ridiculous charge that Romm is a “conspiracy theorist” at the end is typical of the popular debate on environmental issues. Personality is debated, not substance. There’s a lot of talk about “heretics” and “true believers” and “hysteria” that keeps the discussion away from matters of substance.
Meanwhile, have you heard that solar panels actually contribute to global warming because they’re black? I’m so looking forward to Levitt/Dubner’s contribution to climate science.
October 19, 2009, 1:40 pmloki13 says:
11-B/20.B4
I found your post thoughtful. Unfortunately, people are so taken with their current positions, I am unsure what can be done. The worst are those who continue to deny any AGW, despite the mountains of evidence and simple common sense. OTOH, you have those on the other side who will consistently use worst-case scenarios from iffy models (and iffy is being kind) to justify what is already their preferred policy points. But to answer your questions:
1. Yes, AGW is real. Very real.
2. Well, that’s the billion (trillion, many trillion) dollar question, isn’t it? How fast is it occuring? Are there feedback mechanisms that will cause it to accelerate, or will they instead cause it to moderate? It would be nice if we had good answers for that.
3. This is the question that people have tried to answer. Unfortunately, those that do are caught between two extremes- the ones in complete denial (AGW? I don’t see no steenkin’ AGW? And I like me my hummer!)… and those that predict the comnplete collapse of all mankind… any day now (we must all live in tree houses and use leaves for toilet paper!). It would be nice if more sensible work was done (what Leavitt is trying to explore, what that Bjorn guy is doing in the Netherlands I believe in a more scholarly manner), with an emphasis on the following-
a. Cost effective ways to reduce carbon emissions. IOW, what are the ways that we can actually do less damage without spending the trillions of dollars.
b. Better models.
c. Research into alternative ways to solve the problem, in case it’s rly rly bad.
Seems to make sense, which is unfortunately in short supply.
October 19, 2009, 7:02 pmloki13 says:
LN,
Caldeira was allowed to read and proof the chapter, and the authors incorporated his suggestions. He says he missed the partiuclar misquote, which the authors will remove from future editions. I think any quibbles he may have or primarily based on the reception the chapter has received from his peers, as opposed to the content *which he approved in advance*, but that’s just my working theory. :)
October 19, 2009, 7:05 pmA. Zarkov says:
Obama pushes alternative energy sources such as solar and cites the German experience. But a new report out called “Economic impacts from the promotion of renewable energies: The German experience” from Rheinisch-Westfälisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung paints a different picture. From the abstract
Interested readers can download an English version here.
Once again Obama shows us he and his administration are incompetent because his staff should have done the proper research before spouting off on how wonderful photo-voltaics have worked out in Germany.
October 19, 2009, 7:14 pmHarryEagar says:
Loki, we don’t need mountains of evidence about AGW. One good piece of evidence would do it.
Problem is, we don’t have one.
There are NO global surface temperature observations before the 21st century. Note: 21st c.
We cannot be sure that the globe has warmed even within my lifetime, although it’s likely it has. It has been warming for several hundred years, and before that it seems to have been cooling for several hundred, then warming, then cooling.
Are you seeing a pattern?
People who claim that AGW is beyond dispute have not thought through the evidence.
If climate trends were linear, we wouldn’t be here.
As for Grover and his deforestation, what’s the sign, Grover? Did we cool the planet or warm it?
October 19, 2009, 8:34 pmloki13 says:
HarryEagar,
The trouble with people such as yourself is that no evidence will ever do. Anything (no matter how wacky, poorly sourced, or just plain bizarre) that supports your ideas is clung to with the tenacity of a life preserver off the Titanic, while anything that might be… somewhat troubling is just discarded. Debate is useless. You’ll believe what you want. It’s the same as it is with Truthers, or Birthers, or NeverlandedontheMooners.
So, have fun with that! When you’d like to join the debate about how bad it, and what measures are economically feasible, feel free to join the grownup table. But it’s people like you who make people like me (who would be amenable to snesible, cost-effective, gradual solutions) throw their lots in with Al Gore.
October 19, 2009, 8:45 pmGuest12345 says:
Don’t know what your opinions of Climate Audit are, but Steve’s managed to point out some flat our broken research on the part of many core AGWers. Mann, Bifra, Hansen. Recently he found out that they’ve been using an inappropriately small number of tree ring samples as temperature proxies for the 20th century. When using the full data that was collected from the particular location the hockey stick-ish warming of the late 20th century completely disappears. Additionally Mann recently published a paper based on some research originally done by some Finns. Unfortunately he got the relationship entirely backwards. So where the original researchers identified a correlation that thicker clay deposits corresponded with warm years, Mann turned it upside down and used a thinner correlation.
Ignoring all that (I’m no climate scientist and certainly garbled my descriptions in that last paragraph) but the most important factor for me is that the AGW advocates don’t have a strong scientific case is that they hide their data. It took McIntyre most of a decade to get the tree ring data. The most widely cited global temperature record is only available in a heavily processed form. Science isn’t about telling people the results. It’s about explaining your hypothesis, planning an experiment to test your hypothesis, executing the experiment, computing results and presenting every bit of it so that others can verify and reproduce your work.
October 19, 2009, 9:30 pmEli Rabett says:
Steve’s case is in the process of imploding. The one tree thing is a crock
October 19, 2009, 10:32 pmRicardo says:
No, it doesn’t.
October 19, 2009, 10:39 pmSirKev says:
While many have made some good solid points, there are still several issues that bother me when it comes to the climate issue:
1.)When did science become about consensus? As others have stated, science is about proving or disproving hypotheses. The key to that is publishing not just results, but process so that others can confirm those results. That is where ‘consensus’ comes from: when other scientists can take your methods, critique them, and reproduce the results. In most instances, that is not happening here. Few methods are published, most of the models are kept in secret. Which brings me to point 2.
2.) We a consistent pattern of a model getting the ‘correct’ headline and then further down the road it comes out that the model was given incorrect data, or was didn’t take X into account, or even in some instances was written to produce a certain result regardless of the data. It’s difficult enough when you are dealing with a relatively new field without bringing in questionable methods.
3.) A lot of studies are not new per se, but instead built upon previous studies. The problem is that some of the studies or reports have been found to have serious scientific issues, yet those are ignored in favor of perpetrating the ’cause’.
4.) Finally, in the discussion of solutions, many of those proposing ideas refuse or ignore the law of unintended consequences. When you are dealing with issues of this scope, there will be unintended consequences that we cannot forsee. No one seems to consider whether or not these solutions are might create more problems than they solve.
I would love to see a rational, balanced discussion but when you have one of the leading proponents refusing to debate anyone on the science or politics of the issue and compares those whom have disagreements with Holocaust deniers, I will continue to remain skeptical.
Remember, when you invoke Hitler it means you have usually lost the argument.
October 19, 2009, 11:13 pmGrover Gardner says:
I don’t know, Harry. Do you think massive releases of carbon into the atmosphere, coupled with reducing carbon sinks provided by tropical forests, will have an effect on the global climate? If you don’t, nothing I say will change your mind. Call it a cop-out if you want, but honestly, there’s so much information available on this, from so many scientific sources, that spending an evening away from my daughter arguing with you about it just isn’t worth it. Believe what you want.
October 19, 2009, 11:24 pmChrisTS says:
Interesting bit on the News Hour tonight about ice testing. The reporter/climatologist seemed to be trying to be very cool-headed [sorry] about it all, but I was somewhat alarmed.
True, they were talking about what might happen in 100 years – a 23 foot sea level rise – but I have some concern for my as-yet-imagined descendants.
Data relevant to our discussion included charts showing that CO2 levels always track with increases in temperature. I could not catch whether they were claiming causation, or causation one way or the other. Still, someone whose mind is not made up might find it interesting information.
October 19, 2009, 11:36 pmMark Field says:
There was never a time when it wasn’t about consensus. That doesn’t mean an isolated individual is per se wrong. It means that science depends on evidence — in general, replicable evidence — and that evidence has to convince others.
October 19, 2009, 11:38 pmHarry Eagar says:
Grover, you need to think about what you already know. You know — although you have never put it together — that there are more trees now than there were not so very long ago, and that when there were fewer trees, the climate was colder.
Come on, man, think!
During the Wisconsinian glaciation, most of the northern hemisphere was covered with ice up to 2 miles thick as far south as Des Moines, Iowa (where the state capitol was built on the terminal moraine, which is hundreds of feet thick). The northern boreal forests were gone. But despite this, it was an ice age! There were glaciers in Ireland.
It’s true we don’t know what the global surface temperature was 100 years apo, so we don’t know whether it is warmer or cooler now. And whichever it is, we don’t know why.
Eli says on his blog that McIntyre’s case is imploding, but he doesn’t show how. He just says it. Schmidt at realclimate doesn’t even go that far. He just says McIntyre is not worth paying attention to, although NOAA paid attention when he spotted a significant error in their temperature records.
Gore and Mann claim that there wasn’t a medieval warm period, but we know there was — at least in northwest Europe — because even after nearly 400 years of melting, the alpine glaciers have still not retreated to their positions of 800-1000 years ago.
We know this for certain (one of the very few facts about past climate that is ironclad), because as they retreat they uncover shrines built circa 12th c.
I’ll take Eli seriously when he explains this, instead of spending great energy defending Mann’s hockey stick, which is, after all, nothing but an unsophisticated statistical manipulation of data of uncertain provenance and significance.
October 20, 2009, 1:09 amRicardo says:
Yes, and back then when the climate was colder the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere was also much less than today. What point are you trying to make with this argument?
October 20, 2009, 1:27 amGuest12345 says:
This is exactly my point. I don’t even need to know any climatology, all I need to understand is the fundamentals of the scientific process. From that alone I can make an utter and complete judgment of whether Eli Rabett or Steve McIntyre is doing higher quality work. Anytime you want to achieve the level of scholarship that Steve maintains feel free.
As long as the AGW priesthood includes people like Phil Jones who is on the record as saying:
They have no scientific credibility.
October 20, 2009, 1:38 amGrover Gardner says:
Well, now that everyone else is in bed I’ll indulge long enough to say that I believe I can think–and read–a little more deeply than that! If the current science is worth anything at all, it tells us that severe variations in the earth’s global climate are caused by a number of factors, among them atmospheric composition, variations in the earth’s distance from the sun, dust particle concentrations, tectonic plate shifts and so on. There’s a good deal of disagreement about what elements played the largest roles, and in what order, but notably absent from any speculation I’ve read is the theory that the Wisconsin glaciation occurred due to a lack of trees.
If atmospheric CO2 levels do have an effect on global climate, and we dump massive amounts of it into the air by burning off millions of acres of forest–while at the same time reducing the carbon sink those forests provide–it’s entirely possible to say that man has an effect on the global climate. I personally don’t see how anyone could think human activity wouldn’t have an effect on atmospheric gases and thus overall climatic conditions, but that’s just my opinion. At any rate, I’m not aware that the Amazon is getting any colder because they’re cutting down all the forests.
October 20, 2009, 3:22 amHarryEagar says:
Well, Ricardo, which caused which? During the current ice age (we’re in a warmish part of it), the carbon dioxide concentration got almost low enough to extinguish life on Earth.
While your problem is distinguishing before and after, Grover is having trouble with up and down. Nobody says the lack of trees caused the glaciation, Grover. It was glaciation that wiped out the trees.
At least stay on your own message. You said deforestation would cause warming. I merely pointed out that a much greater deforestation than anything we are capable of did not do so.
October 20, 2009, 1:12 pmDan Weber says:
So how about nuclear power?
October 20, 2009, 2:04 pmSirKev says:
Excellent suggestion. At a time when we are told to look at how other countries are trying to solve their problems, their is a noticable silence on nuclear power. If it so harmful as we’ve been told over the last 20-30 years, why are so many countries running towards it to solve their energy issues. Why is it OK for France and not for the U.S.? In fact the global demand for nuclear power is so great that there is a 20 year waiting list for the steel needed to construct the reactor cores. The reason? There is one facility in all the world (Japan) that can create the type of steel necessary. We could solve energy and job issues in the Northeast and Midwest by giving incentives to the steel industry to update their facilities to create this steel and provide tax credits and streamline regulation to allow energy concerns to build. If Gov. Arnold can sign legislation to wipe out environmental regulations in order to build a football stadium in Southern California, why can’t he do the same to build a nuclear reactor or oil refinery?
Finally, we have a great facility in Yucca Mtn that is just waiting to take on and store the waste products. It is completely safe, in the middle of nowhere picked for just this purpose.
What’s interesting about what has happened to nuclear energy in this country is that by shutting down all construction of energy facilities (nuclear plants, oil refineries) we are forced to continue to use outdated less efficient plants. Facilities built today would be more efficient, more automated, and much safer for people and the environment. Instead we have to keep solidering on with worn out sites because we’ve contracted ourselves to the limit.
October 20, 2009, 2:24 pmGrover Gardner says:
I’m not aware that the glaciers set the trees on fire before crushing them, dumping billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. If that had been the case, perhaps the glacial period would have ended far sooner than it did! But of course, if that had been the case we would probably see it somewhere in the geological record, which we don’t, to my knowledge.
October 20, 2009, 2:43 pmloki13 says:
I think that there are more problems associated with nuclear power than the most diehard proponents want to believe, but I think that nuclear power would be one of the technologies that we should be investing in. There isn’t a single solution, but nuclear power should definitely be one of the ways we look at addressing the problem.
October 20, 2009, 3:12 pmHarryEagar says:
Grover, you are not dumb, but you need to think about what you say.
Virtually all of the carbon in the boreal forests during the previous interglacial returned to the atmosphere as the trees, killed by cold or drought, rotted.
If you followed the dendrologists’ search for ancient trees to take samples from, you would know that they are inconveniently scarce. Out of tens of billions, only a few thousand failed to return their carbon to the atmosphere.
October 20, 2009, 4:00 pmGrover Gardner says:
That’s an interesting scenario, Harry. Let’s see if I can put it in sequence:
1) When it was really cold and there were glaciers all over the place, there were fewer trees, so it was really cold.
2) The glaciers deforested much of the planet and buried the trees under ice, so it was still really cold!
3) But before that, the trees killed by the previous ice age rotted and released a lot of carbon dioxide into the air, but then it got really cold again! (But before that, while the trees were rotting, it was kinda warm…)
Have I got that right?
Of course, all this happened within a few decades, proving that modern, man-made deforestation can’t possibly exacerbate global warming.
Boy, I’m glad we got that straight.
October 21, 2009, 2:38 amHarryEagar says:
You got it.
Variations in carbon dioxide are not closely linked to variations in temperature.
October 21, 2009, 1:45 pmGrover Gardner says:
Well, I must say, that’s pretty convincing, Harry. Do you have a source for this theory that I could read about?
October 21, 2009, 11:20 pmThe Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » Against Climate McCarthyism says:
[...] do, yet nonetheless question the desirability of cap-and-trade, targets and timetables, etc. The furor over SuperFreakonomics is a recent example. Their post notes some [...]
November 10, 2009, 12:12 pm